SIMPOL Documentation

Now that our basic database table has been created, it is time to create a form so that we can manage the data effectively and for creating our application. Select File → New → Form… from the menu to create a new form. Then double-click the left mouse button and select the Use system colors check box and click on OK.

This time, we are going to add a number of controls in one step. Select the edit control tool from the tool bar, or choose Draw → Editable Text from the menu, and then starting roughly in the center of the form horizontally and near the top vertically, drag a rectangle and then let go. In the Properties dialog, select the Data Table combo box and from there, select the Address table entry. Then drag select the entries from FirstNames through Postcode. Then while holding the Ctrl key depressed, also select the entries: Telephone, Fax, Email, and Remarks. When all are selected, click on the check box below the field list entitled: Create field label. The window should look something like this:

The Properties dialog selecting multiple fields for the edit control.

Now click on the OK button. On the form, a text control for the label and an edit control for the content will be created for each selected field in the list. They are all created with the same foreground and background colors, so the text controls will need to be adjusted.

The form after adding multiple controls at once.

To resolve this, click and drag a rectangle around only the label controls. Once all have been selected, click with the right button and from the menu select the Graphic Properties item. In the dialog window, change the Background Color entry to CLR_BTNFACE and then click on the Set Back Color button. Now change the Text Color entry to CLR_BTNTEXT and click on the Set Text Color button. Click on either the Cancel or the Close gadget to exit.

Now we can position the content, and add the remaining fields. The AddressID field content is meant to be created programmatically, so it should be added as a bound text control instead of an edit control. Create the label and content as separate steps. Move the labels and edit controls into position by selecting the group and then grabbing the widget at the center (it may not be visible, but the cursor will change appropriately). For the CountryCode field add a combo box control. In the dialog, select the CountryCode field from the Bound Field list.

The Properties dialog for the combo box control.

Now click on the Contents… button. In the resulting dialog window, from the List Source Type combo box, select the static entry. Now in the blank edit control at the bottom of the list, add the value Canada, then click on the Insert button. Continue with the values: France, Germany, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, and United States. Also click on the check box entitled: Assign alternate value if selected. Now in the Value List Contents section, add the following values in the same way as before: CA, FR, DE, IT, ES, GB, and US. The dialog window should look similar to this:

The List Contents dialog for the combo box control.

The only change remaining is to size the Remarks control larger, and then double-click on it and tick the Multiline check box so that formatted text can be added into the control. After rearranging the controls, and resizing the form (assigning the name addressform to both form and page names), the screen looks like this:

The final look of the form.

To make things a bit more friendly, we will want to put the focus into the first field when a new record is created, and to make that easier, we should give the dataform1edit control a more useful name, so double-click on that and change the control name to tbFirstnames. Now click the OK button.

The final bit of tweaking is to modify the tab order. Every single control is part of the tab order, since in SIMPOL, the tab order and the z-order are the same. Click on the Define → Tab Sequence item and the list of controls will be shown with their names. Now we haven't bothered to assign special names to the controls this time, so the names won't be terribly meaningful, but as the controls are selected in the list, a colored border is placed around each item on the form. Multiple controls can be selected at once, and moved as a block up or down. Use this tool to arrange the controls in the order desired. Any changes are not permanent until the OK button is clicked. Save the form as a form (not a program) into our project source directory, which is the directory of the same name as the project below the root project directory. So if the project is called AddressBook, then it will be in a directory called AddressBook and that will have two subdirectories, bin and AddressBook. The second of these is the source directory.

Well, so far so good. The form has been created and we are ready to start diving into the code, which we will do in the next section.